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Romanticism

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Realism

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Impressionism

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Simon Bolivar led Venezuela to independence in 1811.

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Germany used to just be a group of German states until it was unified in 1871.

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German Unification - The Birth of a European Super-Power

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Article and Summary of Venezuelan Independence Movement

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Article and Summary of Venezuelan Independence Movement

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Simon Bolivar led the Venezuelan independence movement.

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A group of Venezuelan Creoles boldly proclaimed their country an independent republic in 1797. Although their effort failed, it forewarned of the revolutionary movements that were soon to inflame Latin America.

In 1806 Francisco de Miranda-who had earlier fought under George Washington against the British, served as a general in the French Revolution, and fought with the French against Prussia and Russia-tried unsuccessfully to land on the Venezuelan coast with a group of mercenaries whom he had recruited in New York City. Revolutionary leaders recalled him to Gran Colombia four years later to take charge of a ruling junta, which drafted a constitution and established an independent nation. In the ensuing war with royalist forces, however, Miranda signed an armistice with Spain. Other revolutionary leaders viewed this action with contempt, and Miranda was subsequently turned over to the Spaniards, who sent him first to Puerto Rico and later to Spain, where he died in prison in 1816.

Early in 1813 the revolutionary junta appointed Simón Bolívar commander of the Venezuelan forces. Bolívar, a wealthy Creole landowner born in Caracas in 1783, had many reverses in his war against the Spanish. His forces were opposed by large royalist armies including a cavalry unit of llaneros ( cowboys of the Llanos frontier), who were under the command of José Tomás Boves. In 1815 the Spanish general Pablo Morillo landed with an expeditionary force that spearheaded the reconquest of much of New Granada. Morillo administered the region in a heavy-handed fashion, however, and many of the Creole elites who had initially supported him soon conspired for his defeat. Llaneros and blacks also deserted the royalist cause and joined Bolívar, whose army was further augmented by a legion of British and Irish mercenaries; the new republican government of Haiti also sent aid. The Republic of Gran Colombia, with its capital at Bogotá, was proclaimed on December 17, 1819, with Bolívar as president. On June 24, 1821, Bolívar's troops, reinforced by llanero cavalry under General José Antonio Páez, defeated the main royalist army at the Battle of Carabobo. The last of the royalist forces surrendered at Puerto Cabello on October 9, 1823. The following year Bolívar's army marched south to liberate Peru, and in 1825 it freed Upper Peru ( Bolivia) from Spanish rule. Venezuelans suffered greater casualties and endured more privations during the wars than did any other Latin American national group, because of the ferocity of battles on their own soil and the large number of Venezuelan troops who carried the struggle to other regions.

Regional rivalries broke out in Gran Colombia while Bolívar was off leading the final campaigns, and his prestige was not enough to hold the country together after his return. Venezuela broke away in 1829, and Ecuador soon after. Bolívar died in Santa Marta, Colombia, in 1830, penniless and disillusioned.

After the destruction of the colonial system, Venezuela passed through an era of government-by-force that lasted more than a century, until the death of Juan Vicente Gómez in 1935. Backed by their personal armies, a series of warlordlike caudillos (leaders) assumed power, which they exercised for their personal benefit rather than for that of the nation.

Páez and the Conservatives

The first of the military dictators was General José Antonio Páez, who gave the country better government than it would see again for nearly a century. Bolívar had left Páez in charge of the armed forces of Venezuela, and he soon took full control of the country. He led the separation movement from Gran Colombia in 1829 and in 1830 convoked a constitutional convention for Venezuela. Páez dominated Venezuelan politics until 1848, both as president (1831-35 and 1839-43) and as a major political player. He subdued ambitious provincial caudillos and ruled in cooperation with the large landholders and leading merchants of the Conservative Party. The constitution that they enacted in 1830 reflected their social and political philosophy-a centralist state, property qualifications for voting, the death penalty for political crimes, guarantees for the freedom of trade and commerce, and the continuation of slavery. The church lost its tax immunity and its educational monopoly, and the army was shorn of its autonomy; thus, state supremacy was achieved. The government then began to reconstruct the war-torn economy by putting finances in order, establishing firm lines of foreign credit, and amortizing the national debt. It also constructed new roads to promote domestic commerce and facilitate coffee and cacao exports.

In contrast to the troubled times that preceded and followed it, the 1830-48 period of Conservative Party domination was an era of political stability, economic progress, and responsible administration. An opposition movement began to develop in 1840, however, when Antonio Leocadio Guzmán, the leading spokesman for dissident merchants and professional men, founded the Liberal Party. Guzmán's new liberal newspaper, El Venezolano, demanded abolition of slavery, extension of voting rights, and protection for the debtor classes. During the 1840s the demand for Venezuela's agricultural commodities declined on the world market; this produced economic difficulties, which in turn contributed to the increasing opposition to the Conservative oligarchy.

The Monagas and the civil wars

The growing political crisis was brought to a head in 1848 by General José Tadeo Monagas. Although elected president as a Conservative in 1846, he soon gravitated toward the Liberals. He intimidated the Conservative congress and appointed Liberal Party ministers. When Páez rebelled in 1848, Monagas defeated him and forced him into exile.

The decade 1848-58 was one of dictatorial rule by José Tadeo Monagas and his brother, General José Gregorio Monagas, who alternated as president during the period. The Liberal Party passed laws that abolished slavery, extended suffrage, outlawed capital punishment, and limited interest rates, but the laws were not implemented. Integrity in government waned, heavy deficit financing ruined the nation's credit, and the economy began to stagnate and decay. In 1857 the Monagas brothers attempted to impose a new constitution extending the presidential term from four to six years and removing all restrictions on reelection. The Liberal leaders thereupon joined the Conservative opposition, and in March 1858 they brought the Monagas dynasty to an end. This first successful rebellion in Venezuela's national history set off five years of revolutionary turmoil between the Liberals and Conservatives. The issues in these so-called Federalist Wars were, on the Liberal side, federalism, democracy, and social reform and, on the Conservative side, centralism and preservation of the political and social status quo. The conflicts were extremely bloody, and control of the central government changed hands several times. General Páez returned in 1861 to restore Conservative hegemony for two years, but in 1863 final victory went to the Liberals, led by the generals Juan Falcón and Antonio Guzmán Blanco.

A new constitution was enacted in 1864 to incorporate the federalist principles of the victors. Local freedoms quickly disappeared, however, at the hands of provincial caudillos. As president in 1864-68, Falcón appeared content to allow subordinates, many of them irresponsible, to rule at both the state and national levels. Liberal mismanagement and increasing political chaos provided an opportunity for the Conservatives, now led by José Tadeo Monagas, to return to power in 1868. But civil war followed. General Guzmán Blanco rallied the Liberals to his cause, overthrew the Conservatives, and assumed power in 1870.

Guzmán Blanco's triumphal entry into Caracas in April 1870 halted the political chaos and economic stagnation that had plagued the nation since 1858. The new president took to the field himself and subjugated the country in less than two years; he thereupon launched a broad program of reform and development. A new constitution in 1872 proclaimed representative government, suffrage for all males, and direct election of the president. Economic reforms, such as restoration of the nation's credit by means of new bond issues and generous concessions to foreign investors, gave further evidence of Guzmán Blanco's apparent devotion to Liberal Party principles. He established a nationwide system of public primary education and promoted state support for secondary and higher education. In addition, he abolished ecclesiastical privileges, cut off state subsidies to the Roman Catholic church, proclaimed religious liberty, legalized civil marriage, and also confiscated church properties, exiled the archbishop, and closed the convents.

Guzmán Blanco was the popular choice for president in the 1873 election. He departed for Europe in 1877, leaving a puppet successor in charge, but when the opposition rebelled, he returned to crush it and resumed the presidency in 1878. The following year he returned to Europe, leaving General Joaquín Crespo in charge. Guzmán Blanco came back again in 1886 to serve a final two years in the face of growing popular opposition to his policies.

Guzmán Blanco's regime had both positive and negative results for the nation. His admirers point to his political and military genius and to his administrative, economic, educational, and religious reforms. His detractors emphasize his tyrannical ruling methods, financial chicanery, monumental vanity, superficial educational reforms, and unwarranted attacks on the church. For four years after the end of his regime, Venezuela floundered in new political chaos as various civilian political groups tried unsuccessfully to establish responsible representative government. In October 1892 Crespo seized power. His six-year rule was troubled by continued political turmoil, growing economic difficulties, and the nation's first serious diplomatic problem-a dispute with Great Britain over the boundary between eastern Venezuela and western British Guiana. This virtually uninhabited wilderness territory, in which gold was discovered in 1877, had been the object of alternating claims and counterclaims between Venezuela and Great Britain for more than half a century. Great Britain repeatedly refused Venezuela's requests to refer the matter to arbitration, and in 1887 Venezuela suspended diplomatic relations. President Crespo appealed to the United States, and in 1895 U.S. president Grover Cleveland pressured Britain to arbitrate. An international tribunal handed down a decision in 1899 that failed to satisfy Venezuela's demands.

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Venezuela - Independence, Revolution, Bolívar

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Venezuela - Independence, Revolution, Bolívar: A group of Venezuelan Creoles boldly proclaimed their country an independent republic in 1797. Although their effort failed, it forewarned of the revolutionary movements that were soon to inflame Latin America.

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Article and Summary of German Unification

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Article and Summary of German Unification

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Otto von Bismarck helped lead the unification of Germany.

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Summary

Whereas Camillo di Cavour directed Italian unification, a Junker (the Prussian name for an aristocratic landowner from old Prussia in the east) named Otto von Bismarck pushed German unification through "blood and iron" and skillful understanding of realpolitik. As the map of central Europe stood in 1850, Prussia competed with Austria for dominance over a series of small principalities fiercely keen on maintaining their independence and distinctive characteristics. Prussia proper stretched from modern-day Lithuania to central Germany. Prussia also controlled the German lands around the Rhine River in the west. In between, from Denmark to Switzerland, lay small provinces that Bismarck needed to incorporate under the Prussian crown to create a viable German Empire.

In 1862, Bismarck reorganized the Prussian army and improved training in preparation for war. In 1864, he constructed an alliance with Austria to fight Denmark over Denmark's southern provinces of Schleiswig and Holstein. Prussia received Schleiswig while Austria administered Holstein. That situation, however, could not stand for long, as Austrian Holstein was now surrounded by Prussian lands. Bismarck provoked a conflict with Austria over an unrelated border dispute and in the subsequent Seven Weeks' War--named for its brevity--Prussia crushed the collapsing Austrian army. The peace settlement transferred Holstein to Prussia and forced Austria to officially remove itself from all German affairs.

With Austria out of Bismarck's way, his next obstacle was the skepticism of the southern provinces. Overwhelmingly Catholic and anti-militaristic, the southern provinces doubted Prussia's commitment to a united Germany of all provinces. Prussia's Protestantism and historic militarism made the gulf between north and south quite serious. Therefore, Bismarck turned to realpolitik to unite the Germanic provinces by constructing a war against a common enemy. In 1870, Bismarck forged a note from the French ambassador, implying that the ambassador had insulted the Prussian king. After he leaked this letter to both populations, the people of France and Prussia, roused by nationalist sentiment, rose up in favor of war. As Bismarck hoped, the southern provinces rallied to Prussia's side without any hesitation. In July 1870, France declared war on Prussia. Within a matter of weeks of fighting in Alsace-Lorraine, France lost this Franco-Prussian War. Alsace-Lorraine was transferred to Germany in the peace settlement, allowing Prussia to declare the German Empire, or Second Reich, on January 21, 1871.

Like Italy, Germany had quite a few serious issues to resolve once unification took place. Regional differences, developing since the first settlement of the Germanic tribes during the Roman Empire, were distinct, and local princes refused to give up substantial power to the central government. The Berlin assembly, therefore, was kept weak. Germany, like the United States under the Articles of the Confederation, seemed merely a loose of confederation of autonomous states. In Germany's case, one state, Prussia, was absolutely dominant due to its size, power, and military strength. This, combined with Bismarck's skillful conduct in international and national affairs as chancellor, kept the empire together until 1914.

However, the creation of a unified Germany in central Europe marked one of the greatest revolutions in the history of international relations. Since the establishment of nation-states in Europe, France, under the Valois-Bourbon royal line, dedicated its foreign policy to the weakening of Habsburg (Austrian and Spanish royal families) and the continued disunity of the Germanic provinces. Now that central Europe was united into two major powers--Germany and Italy--Europe was quite a different place. What would now become of the traditional balance of power in place since the defeat of Napoleon? The whole point had been that no one nation should gain excessive power and strength on the Continent. With the unification of Germany in central Europe--an essential economic and strategic region--was the balance of power doomed?

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Europe (1848-1871) quizzes about important details and events in every section of the book.

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Article and Summary of Italian Unification

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Article and Summary of Italian Unification

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The people that helped lead the unification of Italy were Camillo de Cavour, King Victor Emmanuel, Guiseppe Mazzini, and Guiseppe Garabaldi

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Summary

The movement to unite Italy into one cultural and political entity was known as the Risorgimento (literally, "resurgence"). Giuseppe Mazzini and his leading pupil, Giuseppe Garibaldi, failed in their attempt to create an Italy united by democracy. Garibaldi, supported by his legion of Red Shirts-- mostly young Italian democrats who used the 1848 revolutions as a opportunity for democratic uprising--failed in the face of the resurgence of conservative power in Europe. However, it was the aristocratic politician named Camillo di Cavour who finally, using the tools of realpolitik, united Italy under the crown of Sardinia.

"Realpolitik" is the notion that politics must be conducted in terms of the realistic assessment of power and the self-interest of individual nation-states (and the pursuit of those interests by any means, often ruthless and violent ones) and Cavour used it superbly. In 1855, as prime minister of Sardinia, he involved the kingdom on the British and French side of the Crimean War, using the peace conference to give international publicity to the cause of Italian unification. In 1858, he formed an alliance with France, one that included a pledge of military support if necessary, against Austria, Italy's major obstacle to unification. After a planned provocation of Vienna, Austria declared war against Sardinia in 1859 and was easily defeated by the French army. The peace, signed in November 1959 in Zurich, Switzerland, joined Lombardy, a formerly Austrian province, with Sardinia. In return, France received Savoy and Nice from Italy--a small price to pay for paving the way to unification.

Inspired by Cavour's success against Austria, revolutionary assemblies in the central Italian provinces of Tuscany, Parma, Modena, and Romagna voted in favor of unification with Sardinia in the summer of 1859. In the spring of 1860, Garibaldi came out of his self-imposed exile to lead a latter day Red Shirt army, known as the Thousand, in southern Italy. By the end of the year, Garibaldi had liberated Sicily and Naples, which together made up the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies. Cavour, however, worried that Garibaldi, a democrat, was replacing Sardinia, a constitutional monarchy, as the unifier of Italy. To put an end to Garibaldi's offensive, Cavour ordered Sardinian troops into the Papal States and the Kingdom of Naples. After securing important victories in these regions, Cavour organized plebiscites, or popular votes, to annex Naples to Sardinia. Garibaldi, outmaneuvered by the experienced realist Cavour, yielded his territories to Cavour in the name of Italian unification. In 1861, Italy was declared a united nation-state under the Sardinian king Victor Immanuel II.

Reapolitik continued to work for the new Italian nation. When Prussia defeated Austria in a war in 1866, Italy struck a deal with Berlin, forcing Vienna to turn over Venetia. In addition, when France lost a war to Prussia in 1870, Victor Immanuel II took over Rome when French troops left. The entire boot of Italy was united under one crown.

Why did Cavour succeed and Garibaldi fail? Was it really only a matter of speed? If Garibaldi had started his crusade earlier and had time to conquer the Papal State before Cavour sent his troops to do so, would Cavour have been forced to give up his territory in the name of a united Italy? Doubtful. But is speed really the only issue? That, too, is doubtful. It seems that of the two, Cavour alone understood the relationship between national and international events, and was thus able to manipulate foreign policy for his own ends. Garibaldi, a democrat, a warrior, and an anti-Catholic, was without question on the road to conflict with the monarchies of Europe. Cavour, with the added credibility of representing a monarch, blended perfectly with the political situation in Europe at the time.

Cavour was a realist who practice realistic politics. He allied with France when necessary and with France's key enemy, Prussia, was necessary. By keeping the goal in mind, Cavour used international power to achieve his domestic goals. Garibaldi was forced to use his own grassroots strength, empowered by young Italian democrats interested in an idealistic future for their nation. In that manner, it is quite doubtful that Garibaldi would have ever been able to gain the upper hand in Italy, relative to Cavour.

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Europe (1848-1871) quizzes about important details and events in every section of the book.

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In the 1800's, Italy experienced many revolts which ended up establishing the unification. At the time, Italy was controlled by Austria. Eventually Victor Emmanuel II became king of Italy and Italy was then unified!